Stories tagged “earth”

It was a falling dream, only he was falling away from the Earth, his cozy campsite and the surrounding forest rushing away with incredible velocity. Rivulets of light sprang from his flailing limbs, swamp gas green. The moonlight glazed river twisted s...

Vomit spread out from the kneeling form of Noah like a surrealist painting. The fire had gone to embers, and the wind was cold in his sweat soaked hair and clothes. Christ! What was that? A noise from the forest line startled him.
A man emerged. Vomit ...

She slipped her hand into her front pocket and pulled out a pencil.
“If there is anyone back there,” she began to calculate, “I shouldn’t stop to check it out”
She let the pencil fall through her fingers to the ground; it was the perfect cove...

They were in utter disarray when we arrived. They were a primitive, fragmented people, bickering between themselves over land or some other resource, sometimes even fighting over differing abstract ideologies.
Their technologies were primitive as well....

Now after time had past, the Sun and Moon
became dissatisfied with emptiness,
that ever present lack surrounding them.
No more was joy amidst the garden bright,
no pleasure gotten from the shining stars.
The sorrow spun around the lovers both,
and both...

A man sat in a small, dimly-lit office, surrounded by computer screens, server racks, and empty pizza boxes. He hadn’t shaved in three days. The design on his t-shirt was a drawing of a galaxy with the words “you are here” underneath....

The impact flattened a thousand acres of Northern Ontario forest and was heard 200 km away. But the cause of the event was no meteorite. It was a cylinder, about two meters long, reflective with a reddish tint.
Someone dubbed it the “Unidentified...

The silk shirt slid easily under his tailored jacket. His hand reflexively touched his silk tie then came to rest on his lap. He didn’t want to be here. The once calming desktop landscape of a stapler, tape dispenser and telephone no longer made ...

I am the daughter of a society on Mars. We live in isolation, fighting our way out of this dark hole, void of Earth’s poetic technology, such as firepower based on philosophy and metaphysics. Starships sail near. When we see them in space, we sen...

I got the call on my radio at 6AM. I dressed with speed, praying the Jeep would run. Working in isolation from society was nice most days, but not when I was the only civilized one, a daughter of Jane Goodall.
There is no room for fear when approaching...

No one has lived in the suburbs for years.
My father always passed down the stories his father told him. His father always promised that one day, he bring my dad back down there, he’d show him his old home and where he and his friends would play....

“Scanning bio signature.” A man in the distance shone a light in the diver’s face.
“Hello? Who are you?” He tried to block the light coming at him with his hand. “How did you get down here? I thought I was supposed ...

Mars is said to be where men come from; Venus, where women come from.
I don’t know where the others are supposed to come from. People refer to men and women all the time, but nobody will say where I was born or why.
Nobody can hear me. Nobody se...

“Earth to Brian.”
It’s so beautiful here. I lie on the red sand and stare at stars winking in shared amusement. They sparkle in a sky clear of pollution or any other contaminants.
“You aren’t even listening.”
All the water is frozen. It spa...

I PILOT my FEAR from EARTH to MARS,
I hurtle through SPACE at the SPEED of LIGHT
SOCIETY may CALL to me from afar;
But I RUN through DARKNESS in my fright.
I’ll never calm my DAUGHTER’s FEARS,
Or take PRIDE in her laughter at a COMEDY show....

The Earth doesn’t let us
beat it anymore.
Another chop to a root
and a branch sacrifices itself to
fall onto your sister.
Another plastic bag tossed into
its ocean blue
and a wave of a hand reaches out onto shore to
drag your father in
and turn h...

The sun was setting, redder than a peach, leaving red streaks so languid & sinewy across the sky. Night was coming.
Emerging from his cabin as if drawn by mating calls of wolves, sex dreams, or fairies, he followed the path from his porch to his co...

You know, I just wonder where she goes. Everybody has places to go, but it’s different with her.
I’m just lounging around and I’ll see her fumble down the stairs with a bag full of who knows what and she’ll zoom out the door. I&...

There was once many worlds. One world decided it wanted to be One. First, they built Elemental Machines, then they buried the universe’s Four Natural Gods on Earth.
Earth is like Australia, an island for prisoners. Here, the Naturals are buried a...

Giant excavators crept slowly above, churning through the frigid regolith, as the conspiritors met deep beneath the surface.
“What you are suggesting, Cera”, said Ikal, “is mutiny. This satellite is still, technically, a military outp...